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Dominion DMS

CarGurus Stealing Leads?

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#21
Jeremy Sacco said:
Hi all - chiming in from CarGurus. I just put up a post with some information on this, but it's pretty straightforward:
  • We removed the contact forms from the Deal Rating Badges today. The feedback here is correct - those shoppers should not have been getting our marketing emails and this was the fastest way to stop that. We apologize for the oversight.
  • Fortunately, those badges are much more important for perception than actually driving user activity. First, they only appear on desktop (not mobile) and only caused this problem if they were set up to include a link to a contact form. Second, they only get about a 0.5% click rate and even less conversion. Across thousands of dealers using the badges, there were 63 leads submitted on those forms last week -- so whatever impact there was would have been very, very small.
Here's the post, for reference.

Regarding some of the other topics in this thread -- I'm well aware of the conversations that are going on about CarGurus right now, since I just got back from NADA. The cash offer test with Carvana was part of our efforts to build a trade-in product that would support many dealers, and has been taken off of VDPs. Details on that here.

And yes, @Patrick O , thanks for sharing the javascript details. The configurator here also makes it easy for anyone to adjust the code, then paste it into their site.
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Jeremy. CarGurus definitely gets points for listening to the marketplace and its paying customers and responding quickly when the mob got bigger and louder probably just saved you guys many many dealer. The biggest thing left is, "what else don't we know?" With size/power comes responsibility and transparency - don't fall into the Facebook trap of thinking that the provider reins over the user.
 
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Dominion DMS
#23
Hello Everyone, I just received a 2nd response from the CarGurus Sales Manager. Here it is. Comments please.

RESPONSE FROM CARGURUS:

Hi Bobby,

I watched the video once again and asked some engineers for clarification as to "What is happening during this car shopping process". If a dealer asks CarGurus to list fair, good, or great deals on their site (Again this is the dealerships choice as they can be a paying partner and not show CarGurus links on their listings) if or when the car shopper clicks the CarGurus badge it takes the car shopper back to the VDP for that vehicle on the CarGurus page. If then the customer decided to submit a lead through CarGurus to that dealer (Not sure why a consumer would do this when they were already on the dealerships website where the dealers full info is listed) , but if they did on the lead submission complete page we do show links to other similar vehicles. Essentially saying to the car shopper "Check out these other similar vehicles in your area" This benefits both the car shopper and dealer as we show vehicles at random but relevant to the customers search from other participating car dealers on our platform. As a whole this provides a better shopping experience for the customer and this is one of the many contributing factors as to why we get over 30 million unique visitors to our site monthly and get more car shopping traffic than any other car shopping platform on the internet.

In addition, with AT, Cars.com, and just about every other car shopping platform suggesting other options is common practice through the car shopping experience. Also, to keep things fair we do not sell these space where we say "Check these other vehicles out" It is a round robin relevant selection that can benefit any partnering dealer with our platform. So in some cases if Ford El Cajon had the 2016 Ford Fusion I wanted and I didn't click on their vehicle and this was also a partnering dealer you may have the opportunity to show up on that same confirmation page suggesting your vehicle for sale.
 
Dominion DMS
#25
CarGurus Bloodied From Deceptive Advertising Scandal

www.dashboard-light.com

CarGurus Bloodied From Deceptive Advertising Scandal - Dashboard Light

CarGurus (CARG: 26.05, -9.05 (-26.54%)), an automotive shopping web site that until recently was lauded for its avoidance of venture capital, has become embroiled in a national bait-and-switch scandal that has customers and investors heading for the exits. Small town and rural dealers throughout...
www.dashboard-light.com www.dashboard-light.com
 
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Dominion DMS
#29
Email from CarGurus with a Q & A to answer the issues. Must be serious for them to get to this special event.


Good Afternoon,


We've heard a lot of questions and concerns from our dealers lately, and a lot of them are based on inaccurate or just plain false information. We really value the trust we've built with so many of you, so we want to take some time to talk transparently about some of the questions that have been raised. Here's your chance to get the truth straight from our CarGurus executives including Sam Zales our President and COO. You can expect a short introduction and responses to some of the most common questions we've been getting, but the bulk of the time is simply going to be open to questions submitted by you, our dealers, before or during the session. If you can't make it to the live session but are still interested, register anyway and we'll send you a link to the recording when it's available.

Below is the dealership registration:

https://go.cargurus.com/US-Executive-QA-Feb2020.htm
 
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#30
It's not exactly the badging that is problematic but the optional form submission widget that can be attached to the badge. If a customer doesn't use such a form to make a submission there is not a possibility for Cargurus to get the information. As we have never allowed third-party submission forms on our site, other than a credit application, we have no issue with our own website leads. I did a couple 'mystery shops' for leads right off their site and have had no issues there either, although I 100% believe people who say something funky is going on.

And I've always preached this, never let a third party place a form submission on to your website.

What I have learned from this, plus the botting issues and a few other items previously, is that Cargurus seems to have developed a very dishonest culture and reputation.



Will @ car.media said:
I watched the video.

I'm gonna be brutally honest here.

If you put that button or let CarGurus convince you to put that button on your website, shame on you.

The functionality literally just opens up the VDP on Cargurus .com - WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT OR ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN ON THEIR SITE?

Yes, the issue and answer is education, but sometimes it's also just common sense.

This is a common sense issue here.

DEALERS: You invest thousands of dollars every month - sometimes tens of thousands - in getting people to your website. Why would you then send them right through your shop and out the back door?

Anyone operating a business should know this.

Shame on CarGurus, yes, but also shame on any dealer that allows this to happen on their site.
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